I walked into my hotel room after breakfast and realized the shower was running.

Why is the shower running? I could see the little flashes of lights in my brain, hear the clicking and whirling going nuts in there.

A few hours later at the meeting, wearing a t-shirt under my suit: “You’ll have to forgive my attire today… all of my dress shirts were mutilated by the gods of high humidity and the miscreant behavior of shower heads gone haywire. It’s a natural consequence of staying at a hotel with no iron that forces you to either pay €12 a shirt or hang them all in the bathroom while you run the shower at full heat for 15 minutes. It works well enough, provided you remember to turn it off. So at least until they all dry, you’re getting the best of my undershirts. Enjoy.”

Shit like this actually does happen if you travel enough and stay in enough Marriott Hotels. It’s not just that I’m an idiot… it’s also a statistical thing.

–

Speaking of idiots, who are these two jackasses that talk “oh-so-naturally” on CNN International to each other? They sound like two Sunday Morning neighbors, shooting the shit across the white picket fence, one watering his lawn and the other taking a break from mowing it, except that they’re trying. They look like two yokel grandparents who’ve decided to become enlightened and read you headlines from other newspapers and then comment about the obvious, and even manage to get THAT wrong.

Her name, by the way, is Colleen McEdwards. I looked it up but who’s the bag of douche next to her? CNN.com won’t tell me. A weekend guy, maybe? Who knows?

I hope this is purely a ratings thing and that they realize how dumb they sound and go home at night wishing someone would give them a real job. After too long trying to watch this ‘news’ I start wondering if there isn’t something more constructive on TV, like porn or maybe American Idol. It’s really the same thing from where I stand, except that porn at least has utility.

It’s not like there’s nothing happening to discuss: not so long ago, Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan and that very night in Karachi there were attacks, as if on cue for the networks. Bombs, killing scores of people, injuring a few hundred more, like something out of a script. Without explosions, who in America would care that she is back in Pakistan? Who even knows who she is in this land? It’s a sad state of things, but then, it’s no big surprise when co-workers ask “Oh, is Hilary running for president this year” as casually as if they were asking if I was going to use my little packet of sugar in my coffee. At this rate, it may as well be acid.

But anyway, back in Pakistan, the news networks covered the explosions and made a big scene of it. Not of the explosions, mind you, but of the fact that they were covering it, as if they’d finally received the memo that stuff happens outside the US. To be fair, it was real mayhem, the likes of which we in this country only know from Schwarzenegger movies and Die Hard. Fools don’t even know. Wake up, it seemed to say, ‘cause this shit happens‘. But then it vanished, as if the credits had already finished and people needed to leave the theater to go relieve themselves in dark bushes. Amazing, the short span of attention you people have. That’s why I keep it moving here, or else you’d drift off to…

HEY! here, here, HERE. Look over HERE!

That’s better.

Also, the mess in Turkey with the Kurds in northern Iraq and Cheney’s Revenge: Iraq 2 – The Son of Saddam. Actually, they’re not related at all as far as I know, but to see Cheney talking about the guy, he’s so certain of the guy’s evil you’d think there was shared blood in Ahmadinejad’s veins and Saddam’s. What’s worse is that he won’t offer a shred of proof to the goal. He just keeps on claiming Petreaus’ reports as gospel. Too bad it’s just as unconfirmed or fact-checked. Or maybe it’s not too bad – for him, at least. At least it’s pretty clear that Petreus himself is quite embarrassed over these political talking points concerning his own words. We’ll probably see him join the ranks of other retired generals when he finally leaves this cursed position of power into which he’s stumbled.

It’s an endless cycle. No wonder the hole we’re in is so deep: we dig it a little more every time you people go to the polls. My god, there is so much to rant about.

Oh, and T’s back. Hope remains for some, though not for all. I’m too tired to go on – sooner or later I have to wake up and you know it’ll just start all over again, which is why I think you keep coming back.

Dylan Cormack

Dylan is our political correspondent, bold and fiery as his fuse is short. He is a well-read, on-location kind of writer and is no stranger to travel. Intimately familiar with many distant and dark corners of the Earth, Dylan brings a new kind of blood to his vicious style of journalism. He sends us his words, notes and effusive rants of observation, commentary and occasional judgement.